Seen in full, and judged not as a conventional crime drama, but rather as a psychological character study, Alias Grace is a rousing success. Alias Grace is a savagely political tale, dressed up in modest aprons and bonnets for the period drama crowd.
This book will not leave you for a long time. This book is a gem. A work of fiction, but based on actual historical events, Alias Grace is the story of the convicted murderess, Grace Marks.
Parents need to know that Alias Grace is a dark drama that centers on the story of a real woman who was convicted of two brutal murders as a young girl (the title comes from Margaret Atwood's same-named book about her). The show's violence isn't particularly gory, but it can be disturbing: An…
In Alias Grace, the heroine's alleged madness is always experienced and interpreted within interpersonal matrices. Convicted murderess Grace might suffer from amnesia and multiple personality disorder, a predicament Grace describes in relational terms when she claims that it feels as if 'somebody else comes in.
To this day, there is no consensus on Grace Marks' guilt. Even during her research, Margaret Atwood noted that no one, even people who claimed to be first-hand witnesses, could say for sure what happened at the Kinnear household.
Because Grace feels powerfully drawn to him, it seems possible that Jeremiah and Grace are in cahoots in staging the hypnosis. In a letter Grace writes to Jeremiah toward the end of the novel, after he has left Kingston and adopted a different alias, Grace writes ambiguously: “Why did you want to help me?
At the climax of the novel, when Jeremiah (disguised as Dr. Jerome DuPont) hypnotizes Grace, Mary Whitney's voice reveals that, upon her death, her spirit possessed Grace's body. Mary claims that she has intermittently taken over Grace's body and that she, not Grace, is responsible for murdering Nancy Montgomery.
While under hypnosis, Grace speaks in an unusual voice and communicates in an uncharacteristically frank manner. Dr. Jordan guesses that this voice belongs to Mary Whitney. The voice confirms his guess, then goes on to say that she assisted McDermott in the murders and that Grace took no part in them.
What was wrong with Dr Jordan at the end of Alias Grace?
Upon his return to his native Massachusetts, Dr. Jordan enlists in the Union Army; he sustains a head wound that causes him, according to his mother, to lose all memory of his time in Kingston and his work with Grace. Like Grace herself, Dr. Jordan is not a reliable narrator.
Did Grace have a split personality in Alias Grace?
After the hypnotism, however, Dr. DuPont and Dr. Jordan provide an alternative explanation based in the science of psychology. They hypothesize that Grace is not possessed by a spirit but has split personality syndrome.
When writing the historical novel, Atwood wanted to avoid bending the facts to create her narrative. As a result, Alias Grace is grounded in as much truth as she could find — the newspaper quotes and excerpts at the beginning of the book chapters were taken from real sources.
The details around Marks's trial and confession are all accurate. Susanna Moodie's 1853 book Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush provides a historical record of Marks's life before the trial, and inspired Atwood to write Alias Grace in 1996.
Grace, we learn, seems to have a multiple personality disorder. Sometimes she's Grace Marks, an innocent maid; sometimes she's Mary Whitney, the vengeful spirit of Grace's deceased friend. Grace is not responsible for the murders. Mary Whitney is the perpetrator.
At the time of her murder, Nancy was pregnant with a child most likely fathered by Mr. Kinnear. Before working for Mr. Kinnear, Nancy was a servant at a different household; there, she became pregnant by an unknown man and gave birth to a baby that died.
Alias Grace examines themes like gender issues, memory, truth, and reality while readers get to play the role of a 19th-century detective. Atwood also famously explores gender issues in her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.
But since it's historical fiction, some of them are real (like Grace Marks) and others are invented for the purposes of telling an even more exciting story. So, though Mary Whitney from Alias Grace isn't a real person, her addition to the tale will chill you to the bone.
According to the account Grace will give Dr. Jordan in Part VI, Mary died after undergoing a botched abortion, and it's possible that the “Mary” part of Grace believes this to be the same doctor who killed her.
Peonies. The peonies that Grace sees in a recurring dream symbolize her confusion about her own guilt and innocence. In Grace's dream, red peonies grow from a gravel path. She knows it's the wrong time of year for peonies, and when she touches them, she realizes the petals are made of cloth.
Grace insists on several occasions that she has no interest in taking a male lover, and even though she marries Jamie Walsh on her release from prison, she does not express interest in the sexual side of their relationship (though, at the end of the novel, she admits she might by pregnant by him).
It was suggested variously that she was possessed by the consciousness of her dead friend, Mary Whitney, or had some kind of personality disorder. Another theory was that Marks had in fact died and that Mary Whitney had adopted her identity.
The story fictionalizes the notorious 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Canada West. Two servants of the Kinnear household, Grace Marks and James McDermott, were convicted of the crime. McDermott was hanged and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.
In an interview for CBC News, Atwood noticed a similarly polarized perception of another Canadian female killer, Karla Homolka, who stood trial for multiple murders at the same time Atwood was writing Alias Grace. Atwood first learned about Grace Marks in the 1960s.
In the last episode, Grace undergoes hypnosis and appears to fall into a semiconscious state. Gathered observers hear a new voice come from her lips, and her words are suddenly cruel, abrupt, and vulgar. Grace, we learn, seems to have a multiple personality disorder.
Did Grace in Alias Grace have multiple personalities?
During her time in prison, Marks claimed to experience psychological problems, including a multiple personality disorder. She said her body was possessed by the consciousness of other people. After serving nearly 30 years in jail, Marks was granted a pardon in 1872.
At one period (May 4, 1852 – August 18, 1853) she was committed to an asylum but was later returned to Kingston Penitentiary. In 1872, after almost thirty years of incarceration, Marks was pardoned and moved to northern New York. After that she disappeared from the historical record.
